Broken Episode One

by Odette C. Bell

  Chapter 14

  He had a love-hate relationship with sand sliders. On the one hand, they went appreciably fast, on the other, you could crash them way too easily.

  He had to keep his wits about him as he navigated through the dark. While the sand slider had its own rudimentary navigation controls, they were mostly shot. That’s what happened when you bought a vehicle from an Arkba.

  “They better give me a commendation for this,” he muttered as he choked on a lungful of the desert. Though his sand slider was technically shielded, it still let in the occasional puff of sand. He was covered in the stuff. It shifted against his legs as he sat in his tiny command seat – the only seat on the vessel – and it crunched under his boots every time he moved. It also covered his hands, collecting under his nails and scratching at his skin.

  He hated sand. Trying to survive on a desert planet for a few years had completely ruined the stuff for him. He never went to the beach, and he avoided resorts like the plague.

  Now, because of her, he had to endure mounds of the stuff.

  When he finally ran into her, he was going to… check that she was safe and then give her what for.

  Brushing the sweat from his brow, Josh stared out into the desert as the sand slider shot forward. The suspension was pretty bad, and he always kept one hand on the rails in case the slider hit a dune.

  The DNA scanner was practically useless out here. Though he tried to stop every few minutes to readjust the sensors and get a lock, it was never going to work. Instead, he relied on a combination of dumb luck and dull wit. That is, he followed the tracks in the sand. While they could lead to Mimi, they could equally lead to a pack of very angry and very hungry sand wolves.

  As the night drew on, his flippant attitude disappeared. It waned in time with every second and every minute. Because as every second and minute passed, Mimi was likely flying further from his reach. For a man who had lived most of his life as a vagabond and a pirate, he knew exactly, in perfect visual detail, what was in store for her. That’s why he leaned further over the rails, clutched them as tight as he could in his white-knuckled hands, and didn’t stop.

  He joked that if he found her, he’d kill her. First, he’d take the opportunity to revel in the fact she was fine, then he would kill her.

  Miss Mimi Chester was turning out to be the greatest pain in the butt this side of the Rebuilders.